2 min lesson
Why legacy ERPs break on SaaS
Give a practical answer to this: "A customer signs a $120k annual deal: a $100k SSP subscription plus $20k SSP onboarding, with a $10k blended discount. How much revenue do you recognize for the subscription in month one?"
Step 1 of 3
Why legacy ERPs break on SaaSthe one-to-many problem
Older ERP revenue logic assumes one invoice produces one revenue event. SaaS violates that on the first deal. A single annual invoice spawns twelve monthly recognition entries, an upgrade splits a schedule mid-stream and a usage line generates a recognition pattern that does not match any invoice at all.
If your architecture forces a one-to-one link between invoice and revenue, every modification becomes a manual journal entry and the close gets slower as the business grows. That is the structural reason a dedicated revenue subledger exists and it is worth naming in the interview before they ask.
Cursor's own finance team draws a hard line here. AI assists accountants in verifying the GL and the accounting; it does not autonomously perform rev rec on a contract where the facts and circumstances vary deal to deal. Build tools around processes with clear, deterministic inputs and outputs - contract provisioning, tie-outs - and keep significant-judgment work human. The analogy they use is the one to remember.
I wouldn't tell Cursor or any AI tool, just like I wouldn't tell a junior intern, to go off and do the rev rec for this specific deal.
When walking through a deal, narrate the five steps in order and pause on step four. Most people can recite the steps; few can explain why a bundle discount reallocates revenue by SSP. Work one concrete SSP allocation out loud and you signal that you have actually closed books, not just read the standard.